NEST

Hey Blogger... long time no see.

Here's a REALLY short film I just finished, NEST.




Of course, birds... 'cause apparently according to some people, that's all I draw.

Drop Me a Line...

SEE FOR YOURSELF

I Animated Something...

There's 4 hours I'll never get back.

Compression sucks.

SCRAMBLE!!!

I've been in a bit of a creative slump these past few weeks. I've lost my drive, & I haven't been animating at all. But after attending Bunny Hoest's ( of The Lockhorns & Howard Huge fame) annual "Bunny Bash", my creative juices began flowing again. I just needed a bit of a jump start from Bunny, Howard Beckerman, Stephen Silver & company to get me going again.

I sat down at my Cintiq & immediately started animating. In about an hour, I animated this little bit of my circus dog doing a surprised take & scrambling off-screen.

(Click on the Image to see him scramble!)

My first pass was in green, & my "tweak pass" was drawn over it in purple. If you watch closely, you can see what changes I made in the latter pass compared to the first.

I'm starting to get back into the groove again. & with Tom Sito's animation class coming up in a few weeks, I need as much practice as I can get. If I keep this energy up, I may finally be able to finish that troubled film of mine before the year's up! Here's hoping!

Late for Easter

Oh well... Happy Belated Easter, everyone! 

For the Birds Goes to the Dogs

Uh oh... here it comes...

This year, us second year animation students have been in the process of creating our own little animated films. & I, being one of those eager beaver animators, is completely ecstatic over the it. Back at the beginning of the semester, I was all set to get this production running at full throttle. I had my story down pat, my characters all designed & I was just about to start animating shots. Everything was going alright.

Then my heart nearly stopped.

Since my little heart scare back in February, I haven't felt quite the same. I've been considerably weaker, my sleeping & eating tracks have been knocked off kilter & I've become a bit more moody & emotional, which to me is very uncommon. I've even had a good amount of nightmares since I got out of the hospital. But worst of all, due to my lack of energy (emotional, mental & physical), I've neglected my little film (as well as some of my other projects for school). Work has slowed down to a crawl & I've actually gotten to the point where I've lost almost complete interest in it. Long story short, I won't be able to complete my film by the end of the school year. I'll be lucky if I get at least a minute out of the intended 2-3 minutes completed by then. 

I don't know what part of my heart hurts more, the physical or the metaphorical.

Yet, there's a little flame in me that still has emotional backing in this project, & I still want to go ahead & finish it, deadline or not. One of the few things that I could never let myself do is quit. I wouldn't be able to live it down if I did. So no matter what, even if I'm nearly struck dead by an act of some unspeakable force, I'm gonna finish this film. I've decided that I'm gonna make this a little summer project, something to keep my hands & mind busy the four months I'm away from school.

It was decided pretty late in the game that I was going to animate the whole thing in Flash. I already had about 3 or 4 scenes already animated on paper, ready to be shot. But when I began to think of all the trouble I'd have to go through to complete a shot, I had second thoughts. For a scene, each drawing would have to be 

1) animated & tested until it looks just right

2) cleaned up 

3) scanned into the computer

4) colored in Photoshop

5) composited into After Effects

& repeat until the whole film is complete. 

& for someone like me, who just happens to enjoy animating on ones, this would take an incomprehensible amount of time & effort to tackle. In Flash, you kill about 4 birds with one stone, all in one program. So, I threw al my completed scenes in the trash & started over.

For me, my use of Flash is a love-hate relationship. While you can accomplish basically the same exact things in Flash as you could traditionally drawing on paper, the program still doesn't suite me right. It almost feels like I'm cheating. Besides, I don't want to be solely attached to the computer. I want to have a thorough grounding in doing it the traditional way with good ol' pencil n' paper. Starting next year, I'm gonna stay as far away from the computer as I possibly can. 

But for now I got a film that needs finishing, so Flash is my last resort. & so far, I'm pretty satisfied with what I've animated. If I can spend at least 3 hours a day working on this cartoon, I may have something decent to show off. 'Til then, I'll be working my ass off (or at least whatever's left of it)

Earlier today, I animated in the Cintiq lab for about 5 hours straight. & of course, I had to have a doodle break:

It's almost like a sneak peek, but it's not. 

& so, I'm off to draw more doggies!

Ciao!

"Totally EXTREEEEEEEMMMEEE!!!"

Shameless plug off the starboard bow, captain!

My friend & fellow SVA-er Chris "Kirbopher" Niosi just finished Part 1 of his Go! Go! Parody Rangers feature film! If you like (or don't like) the old Power Rangers movie, then you'll definitely get a kick out of this.

Kirb'll be posting each "chapter" of the film up on Newgrounds weekly, so make sure to go check it out! *LINK*

An Animated Card for a Sweet 16...

A few weeks ago, I got a Sweet 16 invitation from my friends Sierra & Michelle, who I knew from the Cartooning classes at Hofstra since way back when I first started there. The strangest thing about the whole thing was that I was actually invited somewhere!... but that's beside the point....

At the time, the party was roughly 2-3 weeks away, & I blew the first two still trying to decide what to get them... then it hit me. Instead of actually going through the trouble of buying a present, I thought it would be nice to actually make them something instead. But what...? At first, I thought I'd make a nice watercolor card for each of them, but then I thought "Hey, why don't I animate something for them using FLASH? That'd be easy!" WRONG! Well, I decided to do just that anyway. The idea of what the story popped into my head almost immediately & I sat down & started working.

The thing I like about Flash is that you don't need an X-sheet to time your animations (kinda) & that it's easy to go back & insert/fix/remove a frame. God bless the undo key! Now if I only had a Cintiq, then I'd be set for life.

It took me about a week to animate. For the fluid motions, it was done all straight-ahead. The only thing I hate about my animation(s) is the timing, everything goes too quick. Compared to my 'Blog Anniversary' piece I did back in March, I can see that I've definitely improved with the program, & I'm looking forward to doing my scenes for the upcoming flash film that I'll tell you about in a future post.

Since I can't post the film directly on Blogger, here's a link to it on deviantArt.com. I hope you guys enjoy(ed) it!!!

By the way, the girls loved it.

HAPPY 16TH BIRTHDAY, SIERRA & MICHELLE! I HAD A WONDERFUL TIME!

NiN10Doh! is COMPLETE!

Hey Everybody!

Remember that Newgrounds movie that I said I had a part in animating? Well it's done & the film is up on Newgrounds! Here's a direct link to the page!:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/432427 & REMEMBER TO VOTE "5"! WE NEED ALL THE HELP WE CAN GET, FOLKS!

Congratulations to everybody who took part!

After watching the movie, I noticed how many mistakes I made. I still don't understand why the faces blink black every few times, I don't remember seeing that when I sent it off. Oh well, what's done is done. Onto something new!

Nintendo meets Romeo & Juliet

A few months back (probably around late-September, early-October), my roommate Chris Niosi was telling me about a Flash project he was in development on called "NiN10Doh!". The concept of it is just a compilation of Nintendo-themed skits & parodies strewn together into one movie (kinda like Robot Chicken).

He's outsourced a lot of the work to his friends & colleagues to help speed up production & after seeing a short 3-year old FLASH animation of a blob I did at Hofstra, he asked if I'd like to do a segment too. Thinking it would be fun, I said "Absolutely!", not realising how inexperienced I was at FLASH, how difficult it would be to animate & forgetting about how busy my class schedule was at the time.

"Ewww... cooties!"

Since most of the shorter, simpler scenes were already taken, I decided to do the Ice Climbers segment. I chose that particular one because I knew how to construct & draw the characters & that the story concept was funny as hell.

Here's Popo playing Brando playing Romeo

When I finally first sat down to do it, I was completely stumped. I forgot what button did what & what layers were which & I was completely discombobulated. & on top of that, all I had was a cheap, crappy old tablet that barely worked anymore, & there was no way I was going to draw the whole 25-second segment with a mouse. At that point, I decided that I needed a new tablet & that I needed to take a crash course in FLASH, doing both in a weekend's time. Now that I had a new tablet ( A fancy new 10'' Wacom Intuos) & at least some knowledge of the program, I started to work on the piece.

Months have passed since then, & I'm just about done with it. The coloring is complete, the animation is cleaned up (mostly) & the backgrounds are set. All I need to do is redo the snow, since the old snow was a complete mess & then I can send it off to Chris for finalizing & tweaking.
I don't know when the movie will be released, but I know for sure that it'll end up over at NEWGROUNDS.COM very soon. I don't want to spoil the storyline for you or post any of the animation footage just yet, since I haven't gotten clearance from Chris if I could, & even if I could, it probably wouldn't be 'til long after the movie has been put up. I'll post later about the animation once it's online.

I'll let you know when the film is out & I'll link to the film directly from here when it's online. & while you're at it, check out Chris' Blog, deviantART page & official website. Definitely worth the viewing!

"See you later!"